Smiles From the Guards in Hungary, Then Sips of Champagne in Austria

There was a ritual quality to the passage as the busloads of Germans flashed their old East German passports to smiling Hungarian guards at the Hegyeshalom crossing, then produced crisp new West German passports to enter Austria and a new life.

Soon tears and champagne were freely mingling at a guesthouse just past the border. Some danced and passed bottles of sparkling wine bought with Eastern European money. Others stood frozen in tearful embraces, staring back across the flat, shimmering autumn fields at the life they had so abruptly abandoned.

''This is the finest moment, this crossing into Austria,'' said Beate Fronk, a 25-year-old teacher who with her husband and year-old son entered Hungary illegally across a river from Czechoslovakia, which East Germans can enter without visas. ''I have dreamed of this since I was a child. But I never thought it would come like this. We planned for weeks, but even when we left East Germany I never believed we would be here. We're here.'' By Bus and by Car

By late evening, more than 8,100 had crossed, either in buses provided by the Austrian Red Cross or in the sputtering, smoky little Trabants, the staple of East German motoring for 30 years. Most had changed the initials of East Germany on the international identifying plate, D.D.R., by lining out a ''D'' and the ''R,'' leaving the solitary ''D'' used by West Germany.

Nobody knew how many were to follow; 7,000 East Germans were registered with relief organizations to make the trip, but an estimated 60,000 East Germans were still reported in Hungary as visitors, and many more were there in transit. All are eligible to stop by the West German Embassy in Budapest to pick up the green West German passport that is their right under the West German Constitution, and to continue from there to the border.

The flow began as a trickle in the spring after Hungary, demonstrating its newly liberal attitudes, loosened the restrictions on its border with Austria. But as the numbers grew into the thousands, Hungary was faced with an immigration problem no Eastern European country had encountered: a wave of people leaving an allied land.

By any measure, the tide was the greatest from the East since East Germany put up the Berlin wall in 1961 to choke off a river of Germans desperately fleeing to the West.

There was a major difference: then they fled through the last chink in a rapidly closing barrier. Now they were being waved across a major breach in the frontier by smiling Hungarian border guards; their departure from the Communist world was sanctioned by a Communist Government.

But Hungarians, who are free of many restrictions that East Germany places on its own citizens, are not joining in the exodus. Since last year, all Hungarians have been entitled to a passport; unlike East Germans, however, they have no country that is committed to accept them.

In all the developments in Eastern Europe since Mikhail S. Gorbachev began loosening the bonds of the Soviet system, few seemed to capture the contrast of old and new as starkly as Hungary's decision to aid and abet defectors from an Eastern ally.

Announcing its decision on Sunday to suspend a 20-year accord with East Germany to stop citizens from fleeing to the West, Hungary said it was guided ''by generally accepted international principles of human rights and humanitarian consideration.'' Dancing With the West

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In effect, it signaled that it was throwing its lot with the West. ''The Hungarians realized that they can't dance in Eastern clothes at a Western party,'' a Western diplomat was quoted as saying. To those who fled, the high politics were less important at the moment that the realization that they had achieved a break many had long dreamed of.

Maik Gotz, a young physician from Leipzig, said he had decided long ago to head West, and had in fact attended medical school to obtain a skill he could use in the West. He left behind his parents, his girlfriend, his patients. ''I saw the last one at 4 P.M., then boarded the 7 P.M. train to Hungary,'' he said.

But now, drinking champagne at the Nickelsdorf guesthouse with new friends from the bus, he declined to feel remorse. ''I have only one life and I must live it the best way I can,'' Dr. Gotz said. ''This is the only way.''

Next to him, a young man wept silently and an Austrian Red Cross nurse consoled him. Stories were as similar in their joy at being in the West as they differed in the routes taken.

One young couple had been caught by Hungarian border guards earlier in the summer trying to run across the newly loosened border between Hungary and Austria. They returned to East Germany, packed their car and received a visa to Bulgaria, with permission for transit through Hungary.

Gerd Bartmuss, a 49-year-old engineer, had made plans all year to visit Hungary to meet his wife, who had fled to West Germany a year ago and now lived in Dusseldorf. ''We had planned to meet in October in Budapest,'' he said through tears of joy. ''Now we'll meet in September in Dusseldorf.''

Some brought only the knapsacks they had taken on vacation; some had loaded cars. A young woman said she was carrying only clothes and photographs, ''to remind me of my past.'' Racing From Rumania

Roland Hinz, by contrast, arrived with his racing car in tow. The fifth-ranked racing driver in East Germany, he had diverted to the West while en route to a race in Rumania.

''It's now or never, I said to myself,'' he said.

The initial tide was about equally divided between private cars and buses. Red Cross officials said 126 buses were to be used in taking the Germans to the West, and Hungarian officials said about 1,000 East German cars would make the trip.

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A version of this article appears in print on September 12, 1989, on Page A00014 of the National edition with the headline: Smiles From the Guards in Hungary, Then Sips of Champagne in Austria. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe